


The Devil You Know

by startwithsparks



Series: Stranger Danger [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Developing Relationship, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 05:02:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startwithsparks/pseuds/startwithsparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before taking his budding relationship with Peter any further, Stiles and Scott sit down and weigh the pros and cons of dating a possible psychopath. </p><p>Can be read on its own or as a sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/576386">Baby It's Cold Outside</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil You Know

As far as relationships and dating went, Stiles' experience wasn't even next to nothing, it was just plain _nothing_. The closest he'd ever come to having a boyfriend or a girlfriend was Scott, and considering how weirdly co-dependent their friendship had been from the beginning, he wasn't sure that actually prepared him for being in a relationship with someone who _wasn't_ Scott. He'd never had to learn how to start something new, how to talk to someone for the first time, how to find and share common ground, or how to be emotionally and physically desirable to someone else. He and Scott had just existed as satellites orbiting around the same gravitational pull. And yet somehow his best friend had managed to have a nearly functional relationship with someone who was about as close to normal as either one of them was ever going to find, and that left Stiles feeling a hundred times more inept than he felt before Allison came along.

It wasn't that he didn't like Allison, or resented her for stealing his best friend, or because her grandfather had tried to kill them (because, let's face it, if that was a deal-breaker, he'd have an even shallower dating pool to choose from lately), it was just that Scott had something that Stiles wanted, something that he had started to feel like he was never going to find.

And then Peter happened. There was no other way for him to explain it than that; Peter happened _to_ him. He hadn't stumbled unwittingly into Stiles' life, they hadn't bumped into each other in some moment of serendipity, he hadn't even been a lingering crush that slowly developed into undying unrequited love like some other amorous afflictions Stiles suffered under. He crashed violently, suddenly, explosively into the orbit that Stiles had been casually rotating around in, and left a crater so large that it was impossible not to notice and nearly as difficult to avoid falling into. As far as he was concerned, he hadn't stood a chance.

The fact that Stiles was only seventeen and Peter was at least twice that didn't seem to matter as much to Peter as it mattered to everyone else, though. He had to tell Scott because there was no way he could keep a secret to himself, and being who he was, Scott had to tell Allison, who told Lydia, who in turn showed up at Stiles door one afternoon with her hands on her hips and a look on her face like she was about to rip his throat out with her teeth. In the end, that might have been more merciful, because instead of getting angry at him, she sat him down and, for several hours, explained to him not only exactly what type of man Peter was but exactly what type of man would be attracted to a seventeen-year-old boy with literally zero romantic experience. And she was absolutely, undeniably right. But that still didn't mean he could walk away.

There were several times when he thought that it would be easier if he could just put his foot down and tell Peter in no uncertain terms that this was absolutely not going to happen, at least not for several more years, until Stiles had the opportunity to do extremely idiotic things (and people) in college. But despite his intelligence and logic, Stiles rarely listened to those little voices in his head that warned him not to do the reckless thing he really, really wanted to do. He tried to rationalize it by saying that a life worth living isn't one where you drove the speed limit stayed three car lengths behind other vehicles and always wore your seat belt, it was one where your heart was racing at the end and you could look back at the skid marks you left behind. His reasoning didn't seem nearly as sound to everyone else as it did to him.

He understood the place where they were coming from and he was honestly grateful to have friends who cared so much about him, but the truth was that everyone had someone else - even if they were technically on a break or they were doing the long-distance thing - except him. That and the fact that he couldn't really blame Peter for wanting to get revenge on the people who killed his entire family, even if killing those people to get to Scott or manipulating Lydia to bring himself back from the dead (and Stiles still wasn't over the total mindfuck that was) was definitely bordering on psychotic, if not completely plummeting over the edge and swimming in it. Maybe he wasn't a great person, maybe he had done some awful things, but there wasn't one of them who wasn't culpable for something anymore. Whatever innocence they might have had a year ago was long gone.

All this put Stiles in a very uncomfortable position. While he could think of a hundred reasons to run swiftly in the other direction, the list of reasons to stay was growing longer every day. He assumed that expressing this to Scott was just going to end in some convoluted ass-backwards plan, but this time it actually seemed like a simple solution for once.

"Last year when I was trying to figure out if I wanted to go out for lacrosse again," Scott started, as they made their way towards homeroom, "before everything happened, I mean, my mom had me sit down and write down all the pros and cons of going out. She said that sometimes writing things down helped you think and that even if you didn't go with the side with more reasons on it, you at least came out knowing what you really wanted; like flipping a coin and being disappointed at the result."

"Wouldn't it just be easier to flip a coin, then?" Stiles muttered, slouching his way to the back of the classroom.

Scott shrugged, "I guess writing it down is an important part of the process." He tore a sheet of paper from his notebook, drew a line down the middle, and wrote _con_ on the left side and _pro_ on the right, then slid it across the table. "Okay, now write."

"Are you seriously giving me homework?"

"I'm sure it's better than whatever Lydia would tell you to do," Scott grinned.

Stiles slumped forward, forehead hitting the table, " _Lydia_ ," he said, gesturing widely enough under the table that Scott had to slide sideways to avoid being racked, "would tell me to run as fast as I can in the opposite direction, and call the police - who happen to live in my house anyway; isn't that convenient..."

Scott just snorted at him and flicked a pen at his head, "See? My idea is totally better."

He grumbled something unintelligible and pushed himself off the table, reaching for Scott's pen and the piece of paper. "Okay," he sighed heavily, "Cons, then..." He looked over at Scott, who'd propped his chin in his hand and was waiting patiently for him to continue. "He's killed people," he offered. "Is that one line for every person or do I group them all together?"

"I'd say that depends on how important a fact that is to you," Scott shrugged.

"Right," he muttered, blocking out four more lines under it.

"And he tried to kill _you_ ," Scott pointed out, tapping another line. "And he possessed Lydia."

Stiles scribbled the notes in the sixth and seventh lines. "So other than that..." he offered, trying to inflect his usual tone of cheerfulness into the realization that, yeah, Peter had been responsible for more than a handful of deaths, and a lot of headaches for his best friend. But new couples totally had hurdles and baggage to get over, right? He rubbed the back of his neck. "Can we do pros for a minute?"

Scott grinned, "If you can think of any."

"Well, he's hot," Stiles offered, but it seemed insincere to concentrate on the superficial things. "He's one of the smartest people I know, easy to hold a conversation with, funny when he lets himself be, a great cook, he likes all the same stupid old movies that I do, and he's pretty brilliant at what he does..."

"Too much information," Scott scrunched his nose, watching Stiles fill the blank spaces on the other side.

"And he's into me," Stiles finished, "which isn't something I can say for anyone else."

While Scott tried to offer a sympathetic look, he mostly ended up looking bothered. "He could be manipulating you too, just trying to use you for sex or to get closer to someone else..."

"Yeah, because there's absolutely no way anyone could ever like me for me, right?"

"That's not..." Scott shook his head, "I'm not saying that at all."

"No, but you _are_ saying that it's more likely that he has ulterior motives than is genuinely interested in me."

"Because this is Peter we're talking about," he insisted. "He uses people to get what he wants, that's how he's been as long as we've known him."

"But he was someone else before that, and what if what he wants is _me_?" Stiles asked, brows furrowed a lot more intensely than Scott had ever seen him look.

"What if it isn't?" he shrugged.

Stiles relented and wrote it down anyhow, on the line directly opposite. He sighed and tapped the pen on the edge of the table. "He does make me feel wanted, though," he finally said, rubbing at the back of his neck. "That should count for at least two, even if he is using me for something else."

For a long few moments, Scott watched him mull it over, his gaze focused on the conflict on his friend's face. Usually, Stiles could make a joke about anything, but something hit a nerve here and Scott wasn't really sure if he should feel guilty about it or glad that he made Stiles really think about the possible consequences. He finally reached out, settling a hand on Stiles' knee under the table, which startled him out of his thoughts.

"In the end," Scott continued, "I guess what really matters is whether or not it's worth it to you to take that risk. Sure, he could be genuinely into you, but he could also just be using you as another stepping stone to his next nefarious plan, the way he's used pretty much everyone he's come in contact with. If he is, are you going to regret it? Is it going to totally screw with your head?"

Stiles stared back at him briefly, pen hanging loosely between his fingers, then shook his head, "I'm not saying that I think he's in love with me or even capable of it," he answered softly, "I'm saying that I feel good when I'm around him and, save for the fact that I was a little drunk the first time we screwed around, he's never pushed for anything that I wasn't already there to offer."

"That's still too much information," Scott replied, and Stiles snorted next to him.

"Yeah well... consider it revenge for having to carry all those stupid, schmoop-filled messages between you and Allison, alright?"

"I guess that's fair." He leaned back in his chair, bracing a foot on the chair opposite him, "So what's the verdict?"

Stiles dropped the pen on the paper and rubbed his hands over his face. "Deadlocked."

"What does your gut say, then?"

"If that was an easy answer, I wouldn't be sitting here thinking about this right now." But no sooner than the words were out of his mouth did a funny look cross his face and he sat up straight in his chair, hands pressed against the edge of the table, and head canted carefully to one side. "No," he said, shaking his head again, "I _do_ know, I've known the whole time and I've been trying so hard to rationalize it that I missed the part where I was trying to convince myself of something else the entire time."

Stiles reached down and crumpled the piece of paper in one hand, shoving it down in his bag.

*

"He's a manipulative jerkwad, who is probably using us - read: me - as another means to a very bloody end," Peter read, smoothing out the paper across his lap. "I'm hurt," he called over his shoulder.

"You're also nosy!" Stiles yelled back, carrying a beer for Peter and a Coke for himself back from the refrigerator.

Peter tipped his head back, watching Stiles closely as he handed the beer over the back of the couch. "My hand slipped," he smirked.

Stiles just gave him a look - somewhere between worried and skeptical - and crossed the end of the couch to flop down next to him. While he was still trying to affect the same casual demeanor as ever, he seemed almost more ungainly than usual; it was clear he wasn't comfortable with Peter seeing the things on that paper, and not only because they were a pretty brutal expression of his own fears. "You weren't exactly meant to see that..." he frowned.

"It's a good thing that I did," he said, taking a swig of his beer then setting it aside. "Stiles, if I were going to use you for anything, I wouldn't have given you a choice about the bite - I would have just done it. You're more use to me as a wolf than you are as an awkward, uncoordinated teenage boy; trust me, I'm at a serious disadvantage by not having your physical capabilities match your mental capabilities. Though I have to say, after spending a significant amount of time with you, I am somewhat concerned that you'd be hard to keep a leash on."

"Thanks," Stiles rolled his eyes. He wasn't sure if he believed the reasoning or not, but Peter was definitely telling the truth. He would be much more of an asset to the pack if he were really one of them, and not some human interloper trying to get in on the furry good times.

But Peter reached out, curling a hand around Stiles' wrist, "I mean it," he said, his face going serious again. "While I question your logic, I respect your decision to say no, and I will continue to respect all decisions to say no in whatever form they come."

"What about Scott?"

"I wasn't aware that I might be fucking Scott in the near future."

"Not like that!" Stiles grumbled, "I mean, you didn't really give Scott much of a choice where the bite was concerned."

Peter shook his head, "I can't say I regret what I did either, but I was hardly in the right state of mind for rational decisions; my brain was still healing and I didn't have complete control over what my body was doing or my own ego. But you'd be amazed what dying does for one's self-actualization process."

"So you're saying you were sane _after_ Derek killed you, then?" he narrowed his eyes, though he still hadn't made any attempt to pull away from Peter's grip.

"No," he replied, a small smirk flitting across his face again, "I'm saying that I was a fragmented man and, like a broken glass, those pieces don't just fit back together again. Once it's broken, it can't be unbroken, but it is possible that it be made to hold water again."

"Even if you get cut a few times in the process?" he asked.

Peter shrugged, "That's what band-aids are for."

"I think I lost the metaphor," Stiles grinned, lopsided and a bit dopey, "but I'm going to roll with it..."

He leaned over the couch for a kiss, which Peter happily gave him, dragging Stiles forward and into his lap while they did. It was long and lingering, somewhat softer than usual, but with no less command behind the movements. Stiles wondered if he could add that to the list as well, that he never had to wonder or second-guess himself around Peter, but he thought the list had sort of served its purpose now.

"So did I help you make your decision?" he asked, smirking against Stiles' mouth.

He shook his head, "I already knew the answer."


End file.
